1C Company announces that Aspyr will distribute five of their upcoming titles in
North America, saying Cryostasis, Death Track: Resurrection,
Men of War, NecroVisioN, and 4X4 Hummer will all be shipping
in the new world in the spring. This seems to be a setback for the North
American editions of Cryostasis, Men of War, and NecroVisioN compared to their
European counterparts, as a February 20 release date for PAL territories
was recently announced for all three of those titles by 505 Games.
On a semi-related note, a new movie showing some of the motion capture in
NecroVisioN is now available on
Gamer's Hell.

Impatience should never be an excuse for theft... I agree that staggered releases increase piracy, but that's because people look for justifications, and we shouldn't make it sound like the company is at fault or deserves it.

Like Jerykk said, its not a matter of "justification" or whats right or wrong, the reality is that people can and will pirate the game....end of story. Publishers are losing money because they continue to stick their heads in the sand hoping that someone will come up with a magical DRM solution or that they can somehow prosecute some pirating the game in hopes of scaring the rest into a purchase. It doesn't work and it hasn't worked. If you are an industry suit, you either continue to deny the issue or you can learn to minimize your losses by making smart decisions. Staggering releases is NOT a smart decision.

@ LMN8R

really? tell me how people are playing english language euro releases on american PC's then.....

localization doesn't always involve language translations. In many instances its simply a change to the retail packaging which is geared to a different market.

Except for the fact that, you know, localization is the reason for this delay, and pirated copies won't magically be localized.

I don't really see how that fact is an exception to anything I said. I said that a global release maximizes sales. The causes for any delays are completely irrelevant. If 1C wanted to maximize sales, they would have put a greater priority on localization to ensure a concurrent global release. My guess is that didn't (or won't) start doing localizations until all these games were finished.

what I'm saying is when publishers make separate release dates for games (in this case, several months will elapse between the euro and North American release dates) the game(s) will get HEAVILY pirated by people in the territory that has to wait for their version to drop. A good example of this was Call of Juarez which sold horribly in North America simply because it was almost 8 months between the euro release and the American. Staggered release dates are usually part of some marketing strategy(or just lazy localization practices). Whatever the reason, the damage in lost sales far outweighs whatever benefit the practice of staggered release dates gives these publishers.

Impatience should never be an excuse for theft... I agree that staggered releases increase piracy, but that's because people look for justifications, and we shouldn't make it sound like the company is at fault or deserves it.

Where at all does this say anything about piracy or DRM? What the hell are you talking about?

what I'm saying is when publishers make separate release dates for games (in this case, several months will elapse between the euro and North American release dates) the game(s) will get HEAVILY pirated by people in the territory that has to wait for their version to drop. A good example of this was Call of Juarez which sold horribly in North America simply because it was almost 8 months between the euro release and the American. Staggered release dates are usually part of some marketing strategy(or just lazy localization practices). Whatever the reason, the damage in lost sales far outweighs whatever benefit the practice of staggered release dates gives these publishers.

Publishers are so petrified of their games being pirated that they include obtrusive DRM yet they don't see any issues with staggering the regional release of the same games.

Where at all does this say anything about piracy or DRM? What the hell are you talking about?

Localization takes time. Especially for a small company like 1C, formed from ex-GSC Game Worl employees. Of all things, I would think you would welcome with open arms a better-localized game than STALKER.